Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Magnificent Samurai Session 7

Characters

Augustus Scitiori - dual-weapon master of shortswordsCatonio - a Catfolk SwashbucklerEliot de la Frau - A Saber-master and pirate.Erland - a Jotun wrestler.Markus - A Hobgoblin Paladin of the God of Chivalry.Melek - a Nephilim greatswordsmanTonokai - a Kazanjiman horse-archer

NPC Companions

Zui Shushu - A drunkard priest the party's hired as a healer

The Cave of the Enslaver of the Flames of the Hearth

Catonio got over his hairballs and the party traveled to the lair of the blue demon, the Enslaver of the Flames of the Hearth. They arrived without any trouble on the way, and entered a short tunnel. Near the entrance they found a glowing glyph carved into the floor and avoided it. As they entered the midpoint, a digging device filled the tunnel behind them and moved forward. As the fastest members of the group got near the end a Link went off and a Glue spell triggered, trapping Eliot and Melek. Catonio, noting a gap between the digger and the ceiling, used Flying Leap and Acrobatics to squeeze through the gap and land on the back of the digger, facing a cigarette smoking Imp in the driver's seat and a pair of oxen on treadmills providing the motive force. On his next turn, he stabbed at the Imp, who Blinked away from that, but who also didn't notice Catonio's Main-gauche in the off-hand and got skewered on the follow up (I roll direction randomly for Blink and he ended up in one of Catonio's other front hexes.)

The control panel was simple enough for an 8 IQ imp to understand, so Catonio had no problem figuring out how to stop the thing. The party then found a secret door in the tunnel and entered a side chamber.

The Goblin Prisoner

The party saw a room packed with building and mechanical supplies, a big blackboard with plans for the digger on it, and a goblin trapped in a crow's cage. He begged the party to get him out. After some back-and-forth talking Catonio succeeded on Detect Lies and realized he was lying about something. When this was found out, he grew to nine feet tall and summoned up a pack of three frog demons to attack the party. The first party member to attack him discovered he was surrounded by an aura that drained their FP 2d per turn. When he died, he exploded and did 6d FP to anyone within a couple of hexes, knocking several party members out. This forced the party to rest for a couple of hours to get their energy back.

While they were down, Erland opened a chest in the room that they had been warned to leave alone and took a 12d Explosive Fireball to the face. Ouch. He went unconscious and the party healer dressed him down after bringing him back up.

The Final Battle

They found a key in the room, and went back to the tunnel and travelled to its end. They found a magical field that could only be crossed one at a time with the key in hand (the key could also be passed back through.) They found an angel in a Pentagram who looked exactlylike Melek's grandmother. They decided in short order she was a demon and Melek entered the Pentagram and cut her head off.

The party entered the room and a Darkness spell dropped. The area just outside the room wasn't darkened, so they were able to retreat but Zui Shushu was murdered in the dark by someone saying "I hate priests." Catonio tried to taunt the demon into attacking but just got the poor healer's head hurled at him in response.

After the Darkness fled, the party entered again, and advanced slowly. Eliot leapt over an obstruction but smashed into it with his face (Flying Leap success but an Acrobatics critical failure.) The party saw two Bearded Devils in the room and moved to engage. While everyone else was doing this, Eliot noticed an altar below and used Power Blow and Breaking Blow to smash it. This caused all the demon's spells to drop and prevented him from casting any further spells. There had been two statues in the far corner. Both were then shown to be illusory, with one of them being the blue demon. His plan had been for the party to enter the room far from the exit, at which point he'd just murder them all in the dark. This failing, he entered combat.

He was a tough opponent, bringing several party members below 0 HP and knocking Tonokai out. Eliot found the demon's trophies hidden in the altar and started smashing them, doing damage to the demon with each one. Catonio, though, was able to deliver the death blow and swore to make armor out of the demon's blue behind. I let his player buy off the Enemy Disadvantage at half price for finishing the quest, and we ended there, with half the party reduced to less than 0 HP and a strange warning about mechanism-armed demons that had so far failed to materialize...